Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Getting assessed and diagnosed
The relative who was shut in a cupboard, tied to a chair or expelled was being managed for the same thing you are assessing now. There was simply no name for it then and no help attached to it.
Told carefully, this changes the story a family tells about itself. Not a line of difficult people, but a trait that has been present for generations and handled badly for want of anything better. That retelling tends to do more for shame than any explanation of brain chemistry, and it costs you nothing to offer.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'No blame will be attached to the blind, the lame, the sick' (Quran 24:61). The verse lifts blame and then seats those same people at the family table, which is close to what this retelling does for a family line.
لَّيۡسَ عَلَى ٱلۡأَعۡمَىٰ حَرَجࣱ وَلَا عَلَى ٱلۡأَعۡرَجِ حَرَجࣱ وَلَا عَلَى ٱلۡمَرِيضِ حَرَجࣱ وَلَا عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِكُمۡ أَن تَأۡكُلُواْ مِنۢ بُيُوتِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ ءَابَآئِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ إِخۡوَٰنِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ أَخَوَٰتِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ أَعۡمَٰمِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ عَمَّٰتِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ أَخۡوَٰلِكُمۡ أَوۡ بُيُوتِ خَٰلَٰتِكُمۡ أَوۡ مَا مَلَكۡتُم مَّفَاتِحَهُۥٓ أَوۡ صَدِيقِكُمۡۚ لَيۡسَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ جُنَاحٌ أَن تَأۡكُلُواْ جَمِيعًا أَوۡ أَشۡتَاتࣰ اۚ فَإِذَا دَخَلۡتُم بُيُوتࣰ ا فَسَلِّمُواْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِكُمۡ تَحِيَّةࣰ مِّنۡ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ مُبَٰرَكَةࣰ طَيِّبَةࣰۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يُبَيِّنُ ٱللَّهُ لَكُمُ ٱلۡأٓيَٰتِ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تَعۡقِلُونَ
No blame will be attached to the blind, the lame, the sick.Whether you eat in your own houses, or those of your fathers, your mothers, your brothers, your sisters, your paternal uncles, your paternal aunts, your maternal uncles, your maternal aunts, houses you have the keys for, or any of your friends’ houses, you will not be blamed: you will not be blamed whether you eat in company or separately. When you enter any house, greet one another with a greeting of blessing and goodness as enjoined by God. This is how God makes His messages clear to you so that you may understand
Qur’an 24:61read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Being recognised for the first time in adult life is now taken seriously as its own clinical matter. A clinical review described a whole generation of adults who grew up before the criteria widened and were never identified, and argued for finding them rather than treating late recognition as suspect. That review is about autism rather than ADHD, but the situation it describes, of people living undiagnosed because the categories arrived after them, is the one these family stories come from.
Lai MC, Baron-Cohen S. (2015). Identifying the lost generation of adults with autism spectrum conditions.. The lancet. Psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Blame loosens when a person can see the pattern was there long before them and was never understood.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When someone cannot let go of the old rule after the rules have changed, that is the same machinery that loses their keys and drops the thread of a sentence. Stuck, not stubborn.
Both people will tell you they were up for three nights. The useful question is what they did with those hours: driven and busy points one way, wired and wrecked points another.
Not every bout of eating too much belongs to an eating disorder. Ask whether how the body looks is part of it, because that is where the two paths separate.